People’s behaviour has long been conditioned by dictators, time, crowds, addictions. Now fashion, shopping and consumerism join the list of life’s traps.
Dictators have subjected/enslaved others for as long as humans have lived in tribes. The tyranny of crowd behaviour at sports, grabbing the latest must-have (like Cabbage Patch Dolls in 1978) or lynch-mob gladiatorial responses like at executions, is well documented.
The tyranny of the urgent is addressed by ACTS International from a Christian perspective, citing Ecclesiastes 3:1-8: ‘There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal … a time for war and a time for peace’, as … Read entire article »

To write creatively, factual knowledge is added to make ideas work. To make pure fact accessible, some fiction is called upon. Faction is the mixture.
A writer exploring an imaginary space ship needs to have facts to hand to make the fiction believable and interesting. When a drama or docudrama is made, people may know what a certain person did at a given time, like a crime, say, but not what was said before or afterwards. The artist adds the invented words to make the known facts believable and interesting to an audience.
Faction is not confined to science-fiction, it’s widespread in literature, drama and film. To take one illustration: people know the bare bones of what occurred when a young French girl received a vision to lead her soldiers against the … Read entire article »

What turned one man’s recording label dream in Detroit, Michigan into one of the best-loved surviving musical and cultural icons from the 1960s?
While big 60s’ recording companies like Stax, Pye, Island, Decca, Chess, Fontana, Columbia, Bell are now recalled only by devotees and less frequently than mods versus rockers or hippies, Motown has remained one of the triggers into that controversial decade and since. The music, like other aspects of ‘the swinging sixties’ is subject to revision and the vagaries of faulty memories.
People either blame that period for the drugs, moral-sapping liberalisation behind the ills of today, or see it fondly through rose-coloured spectacles as a time of freedom, peace, love and ‘doing your own thing, letting it all hang out’. But there is widespread agreement that Hitsville USA, Motown, … Read entire article »

London Classic Theatre at
Playhouse Theatre, Norwich
Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 22 September 2011
As much psychological study as play, Equus is a powerful, yet sensitive insight into a repressed and awkward teenager, facing his development and relationships, hiding in a world of TV commercials.
Locked in a tight, semi-circle of light and minimal blocks, contrasting with the dark openness of the Playhouse stage, psychiatrist (Malcolm James) narrated the case: why a 17 year old youth blinded six horses.
Conflict and tension came from the doctor teasing information from each character, asking, provoking. ‘When you’re in the adjustment business, you’re never short of customers’.
All-seeing eyes and the mother’s (Anna Kirke) Biblical equine images affected everyone. Symbolic horse heads hung in the shadows. Scenes flowed from psychiatrist’s study to stable to the boy’s … Read entire article »

Many people lead unusual lives; some end in the strangest, almost unbelievable deaths. Hollywood loves them all: the odder, the better to feed new material.
As art often imitates life, people who’ve died from unusual diseases, accidents (boats, cars, planes, trains, industrial machinery), wars, disasters, murders, suicides, executions and quirks of fate are source material to film-makers. People rubberneck motorway accidents and flock to see where celebrities like Princess Diana or Elvis Presley died, as death is compelling on film or in situ.
People In Extraordinary Departures
Folklore claims in 401 BC, a soldier condemned for murder survived 17 days of scaphism (penned in a trough, head and limbs coated with honey, left to death by insects); and in 207 BC, Greek philosopher, Chrysippus is believed to have died of laughter watching his … Read entire article »

People love historical battle re-enactments, but WW2 has unique appeal. There are vast quantities of artifacts to stir memory and teach the next generation.
There are lots of aphorisms about people learning from history, including that people don’t learn from history; that people learn about history not to make the same mistakes, and that those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it. True or not, the fact remains, people are endlessly fascinated by the Second World War’s history; and many feel that younger generations need to know it too.
It’s guessed that the length of time devoted to footage of and about that War on British television alone has already exceeded the length of the actual conflict, 1939-1945. That’s without counting movies, diaries/recollections, historical books and novels that have … Read entire article »

Guys and Dolls
at the Maddermarket Theatre, Norwich
Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 17 September 2011.
Good to see the Maddermarket enthusiastically relishing the challenge of another classic musical. And they’re doing it brilliantly.
Set in New York’s 1950s seedy underworld, the unlikely love between a gambler and a Salvation Army sergeant is well sustained.
Every comic possibility is delivered with panache. The 3-piece band are outstanding.
Director John Mangan has done a creatively, deft job, alternating locations, maintaining pace and allowing song gems like The Oldest Established, I’ll Know, A Bushel and a Peck, Take Back Your Mink, Sit Down You’re Rocking the Boat and Luck Be a Lady to speak for themselves.
He plays and dances a mean sidekick, clown-like character in it, too.
Melissa Sampson portrays the difficult buttoned-up/falling in love role, while … Read entire article »

If people would say what they mean, instead of speaking/writing/hiding in cliches, jargon and obfuscation, might understanding be greater?
The Free Dictionary gives meanings of the little-used but useful word, obfuscation. To obfuscate is to make so confused as to be difficult to understand, to dim, to darken, make indistinct or obscure, often used of the truth. Expanded definitions include bafflement, befuddlement, bemusement, disarray, mystification and confusion. All the nuances can be wrapped up in how some people and organisations communicate written/oral information/instruction, and how many people respond.
Plain English, Plain Language
The Plain English Campaign is a commercial editing and training firm based in the United Kingdom, ‘fighting for plain English in public communication’. They oppose ‘gobbledygook, jargon and legalese’. Once, the language they oppose was found mainly in legal documents; nowadays … Read entire article »

From the Geometry of Innocence to Mondrian’s abstracts to Mozart’s Effect to Minimalist music & painting, the arts owe a debt to the science of mathematics.
Maths is popularly thought definite, absolute and provably true, while art is the exact opposite, often defying logic. However, there are few certain realities, and some of the greatest works of art have drawn on mathematics to demonstrate that.
Geometry as Artistic Fundamental
Albert Einstein said: In so far as statements of geometry speak about reality, they’re not certain, and in so far as they are certain, they don’t speak about reality.’ Geometry is the essence in architecture and design, but is also a powerful image-maker.
The Geometry of Innocence is a book (2001) by US photographer Schles, about which Library Journal says: ‘his critical eye brought him … Read entire article »

Most people have ambivalent, contradictory feelings ranging from love to hate about other people, things, places, sounds and smells. It’s part of life.
Some psychologists believe a love-hate relationship between couples, where conflict is used to strengthen love, is better than a straightforward one. Neil Warner, author of Turning Conflicts Into True love argues that people change, as ‘conflict is to help you learn the basic truth about how to deal with each other. It takes two to dispute, but only one to repair a relationship’.
The range of people’s love-hate relationships cover all aspects of life. For example, blogger Karen Fredricks has one with Amazon, not for books, but how it reviews non-book products.
Love-Hate Shopping and Style
Anna North, writes on Jezebel, a women’s opinion blog about keeping women from hating their … Read entire article »